Why not bicycle through history?

St. John’s Gate, Clerkenwell: the medieval home of the Museum of the Order of St. John

You don’t need to go far to find history in London – the city is packed with the stuff, from Roman ruins in the Square Mile to medieval fortifications on the River Thames to Victorian shopping arcades in Piccadilly. Hire a Santander Cycle from one of the 748 docking stations across the capital and you can tick off the centuries with ease.

Cycling around the centre of town can feel like an architectural history tour, and you don’t even need to get off your bike to get a sense of London’s glorious past.

Meander through the backstreets of Clerkenwell, for example (pick up a bike at Red Lion Street) and you’ll be rewarded with the sight of pretty Clerkenwell Green, St Peter’s Italian Church, which dates from the area’s heyday as London’s Little Italy from the 1850s to the 1960s, and St. John’s Gate, the medieval home of the Museum of the Order of St. John. Just east of here is the Museum of London, where you can learn all about how the city has changed over the years. Leave your bike at the docking station right outside.

The museum quarter in South Kensington offers further historical delights. Grab a bike from the Natural History Museum docking station to explore the grand Victorian buildings and monuments that line Exhibition Road, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. The Victoria & Albert Museum, the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens are just some of the features of ‘Albertopolis’, as the area has become known thanks to the influence of Queen Victoria’s husband.

From here, royal London is just a short bike ride away through Green Park (or pick up a bike at Wellington Arch). Buckingham Palace as we see it today dates from the 19th century, but St James’s Palace is much older, built in the 1530s in the Tudor style typical of that time. Festivities were held in adjacent St James’s Park in Queen Elizabeth I’s day, but the green space you cycle through now (sticking to the paths, of course!) was redesigned by John Nash, the architect also responsible for Buckingham Palace.

But if you’re going to cycle in just one historic London park, make it Hyde Park. It was here that cycling first took off as a craze in the 1890s, making it the true home of London cycling.